Abu Zubaydah

Abu Zubaydah (12 March 1971-), born Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, was the military chief of al-Qaeda from November 2001 to March 2002, replacing Mohammed Atef after his assassination by the United States.

Biography
Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn was born on 12 March 1971 in Saudi Arabia, and he moved to the West Bank as a teenager to take part in demonstrations against Israel for the Palestinian cause. He studied computer science in Pune, Maharashtra, India before heading to Afghanistan in 1991 at age 20, joining the mujahideen during the Afghan Civil War and being trained by al-Qaeda. Husayn took on the nom de guerre of "Abu Zubaydah", and in 1992 he suffered from memory loss and inability to speak due to a mortar wound to the left side of his head. Later, he worked as an instructor at the Khalden training camp and helped in training al-Qaeda fighters, but by 2001 the camp had closed due to ideological divisions within al-Qaeda. Abu Zubaydah was involved in planning attacks against the United States, encouraging Ahmed Ressam to blow up Los Angeles International Airport in the Millennium Plot of 2000, and Jordan sentenced him to death in absentia for planning to attack US and Israeli targets in Jordan. He also had a role in planning the 1998 US embassy bombings and the 2001 9/11 attacks, and he was believed to have planned out every major al-Qaeda attack. He replaced Mohammed Atef as military chief of al-Qaeda on his death in November 2001, but he would not remain in that post for long; in March 2002, he was arrested in Pakistan, the first major capture of the CIA during its search for al-Qaeda leaders. He was tortured in Guantanamo Bay and at "black sites" in Poland, and Abu Zubaydah was held at a black site called "Strawberry Fields" in Cuba.